This chapter discusses the efforts of the NAACP and MFDP to register voters and run candidates for office during the first five years of the Voting Rights Act. The organizations were often in conflict, with the NAACP's top-down authoritarian approach clashing with the grassroots, SNCC-influenced structure of the MFDP. Both parties still cooperated occasionally, indicated a fluid black politics of the era, and used civil rights protests such as the boycott to win concessions and support black candidates. While white resistance stymied both civil rights groups, both achieved notable successes, namely the election of Robert Clark to the legislature and Charles Evers as mayor of Fayette. Ultimately, the NAACP approach of running within the Democratic party won out, yielding more gains than the MFDP's independent candidacies. White politicians of both parties also changed, as they began to haltingly solicit black voters, even if clandestinely.